


Extraordinarily Mundane

by tptigger



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Carl Romeo - Freeform, College Applications, Gen, hazards of being sevarfrith, slight Nita/Kit, spoilers for Interim Errantry and Games Wizards Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-11 23:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12946731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tptigger/pseuds/tptigger
Summary: When so much of the amazing things you've done involve wizardry, how do you explain to a college how cool you are without breaking sevarfrith?





	Extraordinarily Mundane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NaomiK](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaomiK/gifts).



> Many thanks to AtypicalOwl for the beta. And thanks to the Yulemods for helping me make sure some of those GWP references weren't going to spoil anything for NaomiK.  
> Happy Yuletide, NaomiK! I hope you enjoy this!

"This is impossible," Kit said, pushing his laptop away from him and laying his head down on the table.

"Right?" Nita asked. "How do you write a college application essay that means anything without talking about wizardry?"

"Carmela's best advice was start writing about the first thing that pops into your head."

Nita sighed. "A significant experience, a risk taken, or an ethical dilemma you have. You mean like when my Mom had cancer and I risked everything to try to talk the cancer out of killing her? And how far it was ok to go? And...."

"Your mom dying is still a significant experience," Kit said. "What about a person who has had a significant impact on you--how do I write about Ponch without the magic? Or Tom or Carl? Or you, but the help sites all say not to write about a significant other."

"Significant creative work?"

"What, like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series?" Kit asked.

Nita chuckled. "Oh that would be rich, 500 words about how the Martian prince took you over?"

"And my best friend finally called me her boyfriend while trying to save me?" Kit said. "Yeah, not going to work."

"Hazards of being sevarfrith." Nita sighed. "Maybe we should look into cultural exchange programs."

"You still need to make a living, even as a Planetary," Kit said. "Because we're sevarfrith, if you want to be educated off Earth, you pretty much need to leave Earth."

"Let's pack it in and go to work for Carmela and Ronan's chocolate export business."

"I asked about that, Carmela told me to come back when I had a business degree."

"Carmela doesn't have a business degree."

Kit shrugged.

"Maybe Brown has a wizard on the admissions committee," Nita mused. "I'll ask Tom or Carl."

* * *

"Absolutely not," Carl said on Saturday morning when Nita dropped by.

Nita blinked. "How do you know unless you check?"

"Nita, what would happen if a non-wizard in the office saw your essay?" Carl asked. "Or the wizard wasn't able to get your essay in their stack?

Nita's eyes grew wide. She hadn't thought about that. "Either they'd throw it out as a crank, and there goes my application, they'd try to get Dad to put me in a psych ward, or worse, they could believe me and call the media." Hopefully she wasn't blushing. "I knew I should've gone to Hogwarts. It's just that I don't know what to write about without talking about wizardry. So many of the main experiences of my life are colored with it. The Song of Twelve, my mom dying, the Pollullus."

"Your mom dying has plenty of influence on you without bringing wizardry into it," Carl said gently.

Nita shook her head. "It's all tied into trying to save her; also I don't want to play to the sympathy angle, you know? I want to get in because of me, not because the admissions committee feels sorry for me because my mom died."

"Yet you're willing to use your influence as a wizard?"

"I just wanted to send the essay to someone who knows wizardry not... my influence as a wizard?"

"Callahan's favorable instigation," Carl said.

"So?"

Carl blinked. 

"I have influence as a wizard?" Nita asked, incredulous.

"Younger wizards are the most powerful, you think that doesn't hold some sway?"

"Younger wizards are a machete and older wizards are a scalpel, so no? Do you have me mixed up with Dairine?"

Carl smiled. "Maybe I do, but Nita I think you're underestimating yourself, both as a wizard and as a person."

Nita raised an eyebrow at him.

"Being a wizard isn't the only thing that makes you special. It gives you a different perspective and a wider breadth of experiences but..."

"...but the rest is so _mundane_ ," Nita said.

"So is selling advertising," Carl said.

"But you need to do it to pay the bills."

"I could do a lot of things to pay the bills," Carl said. "I chose selling advertising on TV."

Nita cocked her head. "Why?"

"Because I like people, and the art of the deal, and sometimes I can push a show I really like to advertisers and get it renewed when it's on the bubble."

"You should have worked for Fox awhile back," Nita said.

Carl snorted. "I don't envy people in my position for the national network. I have convinced our affiliate to keep syndicated shows they might have otherwise dropped, though. We're getting off topic."

Nita smiled shyly. "I don't really expect you to help me choose a topic for my college essay. I just..."

"Wanted permission to risk breaking sevarfrith because you're stumped?" Carl prompted.

Nita shifted uncomfortably.

"You're getting older, Nita; as you get older, you need more to your life than just work and wizardry. School has after school activities, and built in socializing, but the further on you get from here on in, the more you're going to need to work to maintain that balance. You can't rely on wizardry for everything."

Nita blinked. "I seem to remember Dairine needing that lecture not too long ago."

Carl smiled. "We all need to learn that lesson in different ways at different times."

"So it's my turn?"

"Yes," Carl said. "You skipped right to the life and death stuff at an early age; it makes sense you'd need to come back to this at some point."

"It's just..." Nita paused. "Wizardry is such a big part of who I am; it feels like a lie of omission to not talk about it."

"The trick is to find your truth without talking about the unbelievable parts," Carl said.

"A lie of omission is still a lie," Nita said.

"I'm about to say something that you won't hear often in this house, Nita: Captain Picard isn't always right. Sometimes you need to leave things out, even things that are relevant, so that the other person you're talking to would understand you. Like you figured out earlier, if you were to talk about wizardry in your college essay and it ended up on the wrong desk..."

"They'd think I was making things up," Nita finished. "Or panic. Or worse, believe me and come to me wanting help for every little thing, or..." She trailed off, afraid to express the thought rattling around in her head.

"Or...."

"Let's just say I get the feeling Roshaun has it much worse than we do, and his planet is very astahfrith."

"Fear is a powerful motivator, Nita," Carl said, "but it's important that whenever possible, it's not your only one. You can do this; I have every confidence in you. Feel free to hit me up for more advice if you need it."

"Thanks, Carl," Nita said. She paused, considering.

Carl's manual chimed.

No, definitely not the time. With that she left.

* * *

"How'd it go with Carl?" Kit asked.

"He refused to look because it's too big of a risk that someone else at the university who wasn't a wizard would see it."

"So back to the drawing board, then," Kit said.

"I guess," Nita replied. "I'm not sure what to do. I mean... let's face it, my grades are good, but they're not exactly pop out from the rest of the pack in terms of achievements. All the experiences worth writing about are too steeped in wizardry-- I mean could you explain the Song of Twelve without using magic?"

"I participated in another culture's ritual and agreed to take a specific part without knowing everything about it and realized that I had volunteered to be the ritual sacrifice?" Kit said. "And I only lived because we got attacked and the person who was supposed to kill me sacrificed himself instead?"

"I am never going to live that one down, am I?" Nita asked.

"Nope," Kit said. "You are never going to live that one down."

"You've one to talk. You were brainwashed by a Martian," Nita said. "Or that time you got into a fight over me or my honor or whatever you two were fighting for."

Kit blushed so red that Nita realized she'd pushed it a little too much.

"I'm never going to live _that_ one down, am I?"

Nita smiled sweetly.

Kit sighed. "Anyway, I'm toying with the issues prompt, but it's supposed to be something that affects you currently, not just in the abstract."

"Like the way my dad's flower business is struggling because of online retailers?" Nita asked. "He hates going through flowers.com or Ftl, but he's had to."

"That would work better if you worked at his store," Kit replied with a sigh. "Otherwise, I could get into automation and my dad's job. Stupid modern economy."

"Student loan interest rates," Nita said.

Kit chuckled.

"I mean, pollution in Hudson Bay, but it's not like I can talk about how we're constantly having to upkeep that wizardry."

"School funding and our wacky schedules?" Kit asked.

"Feels too easy and not very personal," Nita sighed.

"Did Carl have any advice?" Kit asked.

"Find the balance in my life with wizardry and what isn't wizardry," Nita said. "Not super helpful."

"Hmm," Kit said, gears turning.

"What?" Nita said.

"Things we did that balance life and wizardry. You remember the time we found all the dead frogs behind the school?"

"Yeah," Nita said. "We tried to use a scaled down version of your Hudson spell, but things kept getting worse because the golf course nearby was using toxic fertilizer."

"Yeah, except that you were talking to the science teacher about it which led you both to that website..."

"...and then I lobbied the city council to ban the use of that fertilizer," Nita said, grinning excitedly. "It's only 500-650 words, it's not like I have time to talk about the stuff that didn't work! I don't know why I didn't think of it before!"

"Because we spend so much time saving entire planets by talking nature into bending to our will that convincing a few humans to switch a chemical out to save the frogs seems paltry in comparison?"

"Maybe," Nita said, smiling. "Thanks, Kit!"

"Too bad I can't tell them how much maintenance the entertainment center I set up was," Kit said. "Or how it inspired Carmela to become a black market chocolate dealer."

"Legitimate business woman," Nita corrected. "She and Ronan have all the permits and everything, remember?"

"And ethically sourced, fair trade cocoa beans," Kit said. "Because the scarcity is so high off-planet that she still makes a killing. Some days I wish I'd thought of that--Carmela's paying her own tuition these days. Mom and Dad are _thrilled_."

"Do you have to talk about what her business actually is?" Nita asked.

"Nita?"

"Did you look at the past prompts?" Nita asked. "They say you can also write about anything else you feel is appropriate. What if you wrote about a person you admire: Carmela?"

"It'll go to her head," Kit said.

"So don't tell her," Nita replied.

Kit shrugged. "I keep wondering how to tackle the diversity question. I mean, we do so much with that."

"Too bad we were offworld when the exchange students were here," Nita said.

"And explaining Christmas to a bunch of aliens is something where it would be hard to leave out the wizardry parts," Kit added. "I wish I could write about Tom, I mean he's got everything: a really awesome house, great career, awesome husband who's also his wizardry partner..."

Nita raised an eyebrow at him. "Something you want to tell me, Kit?"

"You're my wizardry partner, silly," Kit said. He pondered. "Do I have to tell them how I met Darryl?"

Nita raised an eyebrow.

"No, seriously, the guy's amazing: he has so many more commitments than we do, and yet he still does all these amazing.... wizarding things. Yeah, ok, never mind." Kit planted his forehead on his desk.

"Kit, what about the moon war games league?" Nita asked. "I mean, you'll need to change the location, but you got a diverse group of people together, and it's quite an achievement, it's been running for a couple years now."

"I'm grooming Lissa to take over so things don't start to fall apart when I go off to school and get busy," Kit said. "Marcus drops by sometimes, but he's also really busy."

"Being in the military will do that," Nita replied.

"So, games league or..." Kit gulped. "Carmela. The question becomes how nosy will she get about my essay?"

"You're not seriously going to let Carmela's penchant for sticking her nose in your business keep you from getting into college are you?" Nita asked.

Kit glared. "I don't know, the alternative is that she brings it up that my college essay was all about _her_ every time we argue for the rest of my natural life. I wish I could talk about the Mars team."

"I thought you and Carmela were getting along better these days?" Nita asked.

"Until she gets home from school, at any rate," Kit said. "Then she code switches like crazy--she's added German to her repertoire, and then she just got into a semester abroad program in France. And that's not counting the alien languages."

"You could do the moon games league," Nita said. "I would just maybe leave out the part where you're training for battle as well as the location."

Kit shrugged. "I'm not sure how to phrase it without, well, breaking sevarfrith."

"Carl volunteered for advice," Nita said. "I bet Tom would help you find a good way to phrase it too. What's the point of knowing a professional writer if you can't use them as a thesaurus once in a while."

"Carl would be better; he's in advertising. Talk about putting the best spin on the truth!"

Nita grinned. "Oh, hey, I think we both have topics."

"That we came up with for each other." Kit chuckled.

"Hmm," Nita said.

"What?"

"Oh, just something Carl said, about selling ourselves short: we needed each other to see what to highlight."

Kit grinned. "I guess that's what makes us such a good team."

Nita kissed his cheek. "I guess so."

The End


End file.
